What's happening?

I've had quite a few people approach me with this same question: "so...have you heard anything about your adoption yet?" I know that it is very well meaning, and people are excited, and I truly appreciate that. Most of the time, though, I have to answer, "Nope! Not yet!" with a smile on my face, like it isn't bothering me at all. I tend to tell people that we are still "just waiting" as if absolutely nothing is happening with it. The truth is, there is plenty happening, it just isn't in the form of new video footage, updates, and pictures that everyone expects.
First of all, we bought a crib. We've been looking for cribs and attempting to educate ourselves in this area. You would think that being a pediatric/nursery nurse for almost 8 years might have given me a clue, but it isn't true, so some research has been involved. Also, not knowing exactly how old Caleb will be when he comes home makes things a little more tricky. Will he be sleeping in a crib? Will he be ready to move to a toddler bed within a month of arrival? And who knows...if this whole thing keeps going, he could be a 5 year old by the time he finally gets here. We decided to go with a 3-in-1 crib: it's a crib, or it's a toddler bed, or it's a full size bed, all in one. After all of the looking, pricing, and negotiating, believe me when I tell you that he will have this bed for life. It's not just a crib, it's an investment. I expect Caleb to sleep in this bed the entire time that he lives under our roof, take a short break from it when he goes off to college, and then come back for it to move it into his first apartment. That's how long this bed is going to be around. And, we really do like it, too, so that's a good thing.
I've posted a picture of the model that we bought.


Another major thing that has happened is that we have officially heard back from China about our initial set of paperwork. This is our pre-approval (PA), which came 2 weeks ago. It is the go-ahead for the sending of our dossier. It is a very exciting step for us! As of this writing, we are very much hoping to send our dossier soon. We actually would have sent it already if we could have, but there has been some delays with paperwork. Apparently, some pertinent information had not been turned in when we completed our homestudy in May. So, we have been really trying to work with our agencies about getting all of the necessary stuff completed. At the risk of sounding negative, let me just say that it has been so time consuming/complicated/fist-clenchingly frustrating that it may have been easier to just redo the whole thing. I haven't wanted to go into all of the details in order to try and stay positive about the whole thing, but I can say that it is finally done (I think).

So, I really can say that stuff has been happening. I know it isn't the most exciting information, but it is part of the process. A pregnancy certainly cannot be so exciting every day either, so I don't feel bad at all. And as far as my complaints about the paperwork process go, I still wouldn't trade it for weight gain, morning sickness, backaches, etc., any day.